Not quite through NM today, due in large part to lots of afk, but also because I was testing builds. Unfortunately, I am now almost a full 20 levels ahead of my gear (since when did first-kill act bosses drop just two blues?) so my attempts at petless kiting turned out very poorly as I couldn't burn the enemies down fast enough.
At the moment pets+poison seems to be the best option if not the only option I have considering my gear deficit. It buffs my dogs/gargantuan up to viable meat shield status between the generous DR on jungle/zombie handler and the further dr for applied poision. Between using stinker garg, poision dogs, acid raid, and darts, there's really no way much of anything on-screen or near a pet is not being debilitated. Also, the pets have done a great job of helping me defeat nm act bosses who keep me running too often to apply much dart dps.
I don't expect the pet fun to last forever, but either way I am likely to need nightmare mode farm to make any kind of headway in hell, to say nothing of inferno. Hopefully the loot gods of sanctuary will smile upon me later
Yeah unfortunately you will reach a point where your pets become totally useless. I was really sad when I had to finally drop my Garg from my set of skills. Pretty sure they're going to tweak summonables later in a patch but right now in Inferno Act 1 my Garg can barely survive and in Act 2 he pretty much dies in one hit.
The Mongrels I never cared for much anyway. They reminded me of the dire wolves for the Druid and I hated always having to bring them back to life cause they wouldn't have the sustainability akin to the Necro's golems. Man, golems kicked ass.
Aye, the time to ditch my beloved pets is soon going to arrive. I've given some serious thought to just leveling another class rather than face that terrible reality though. To my mind, playing the WD like some kind of unholy hammerdin (that was the feeling i got watching a tankdoctor video) or a wizard just doesn't sit well with me.
Didn't have any time to log in today so finishing nm diablo will have to wait. I hope level 50 is ok for starting hell mode.
...since when did first-kill act bosses drop just two blues?
There was a recent Reddit AMAA where Jay Wilson answered this. For some reason, he felt that having bosses drop guaranteed rares for the first kill past normal would be detrimental to the game. I'm not really sure why. It was something like he was afraid people would think boss runs were supposed to be the way to farm or something. In any case, he said others on the team have convinced him that he was wrong about that and guaranteed rare drops will be added to post-normal boss kills at some point in the future.
Also, welcome back to the forums even though I don't think we've crossed paths before. I might have to go check out that religion thread though. Go-go gadget skepticism!
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...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
Ah, good to know it was an intended issue and not a bug. It's not at all that i'm starved for rares (although good ones are clearly scarce), but it is anti-climactic.
I was quite ready to shelf the WD for a while and get to leveling my barbarian when I had the good fortune to run into some fellow diablofans online (Much appreciated friends). Until that point I had the notion I would solo my way to the end of hell mode. Much to my chargin, this was proving so incredibly tedious (due to my gear deficit) as to break my will.
Today I gave public cooperative games a shake and despite some bugs (periodically unable to use party chat) and a disconnect or two, it was quite fulfilling. I began a game at the start of act1 and our party nearly made it to the conclusion of act2. There was much donating of favorable drops between myself and a barbarian (we seemed to get each other's loot at every turn) and good spirits were maintained all around until the inevitable need for us to part ways.
During this jaunt I managed to skill my way into zombie bears and after some fiddling with my spell setup I fumbled into what appeared to be an optimal build (for my equipment set at least). My desire to avoid Vision Quest was foiled, but with four short and fairly useful cooldowns to operate from and the ability to retain splinters it handles solo and group questing nicely. I remain to test it on a serious boss encounter, but I have high hopes.
It's not at all that i'm starved for rares (although good ones are clearly scarce), but it is anti-climactic.
It indeed is. The whole loot system kind of failed to deliver and make any significant improvements upon the D2 system, which had some pretty big flaws by itself. But they appear to be in the process of fixing the dreaded state in which the legendary items are in as of now, and the ridiculous idea of bosses not dropping at least a rare on first kills on any difficulty is apparently being thrown out of the game as well. So things might get a lot better real soon.
Also, wizard rocks. I'm currently playing through hardcore Hell with the class and I find it rather enjoying. The mobility wizard has allows for some great display of player skill. I'll be devastated when she dies. xD
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"Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the small death that brings total obliteration."
I also failed to have any out of body experiences, see any lights, or sense the existence of the supernatural.
You can't be sure. Maybe you are in an alternate reality now and this is the afterlife.
An afterlife where D3 is a nice game that drops you lousy items. A bit like Tantalus. You are in the middle of all this good stuff, but you will never get it.
If this is what passes for an afterlife, complete with job, bills, and the like, I would like to have a word with the entity in charge. >D
I tried a build like that, it's amazing but handling all those short CD's is difficult. If you master that you will be unstoppable.
Indeed and i'm a wee bit undergeared to make much use of the bears, but for hell mode it's doing alright. I just wish I could get pierce the veil in there for splinters to hit as hard as they used to on my old build.
The whole loot system kind of failed to deliver and make any significant improvements upon the D2 system, which had some pretty big flaws by itself. But they appear to be in the process of fixing the dreaded state in which the legendary items are in as of now, and the ridiculous idea of bosses not dropping at least a rare on first kills on any difficulty is apparently being thrown out of the game as well. So things might get a lot better real soon.
That sounds hopeful. If they can manage that in the same patch as fixing WD pets it will do much for my quality of life.
Also, wizard rocks. I'm currently playing through hardcore Hell with the class and I find it rather enjoying. The mobility wizard has allows for some great display of player skill. I'll be devastated when she dies. xD
I found the wizard very tedious in the early levels, but I will give it a fair shake some day. I commend you on your brave HC play. I haven't got the courage to step up to that level yet.
Ended up switching to this more lenient VQ Splinter/Bear spec tonight. Got me to act4 hell without a hitch. Finally coming into a steady stream of gear upgrades too so, life is good. Inferno will be quite a shock to my paltry ~22k hp and ~7k dps though. It may be coming time to see what all cheap upgrades are available on the AH. I've managed to squirrel away almost a million gold and my scrooging instincts are now strongly opposed to spending.
I am absolutely terrified of hell mode diablo. Nightmare was a test in and of itself. I'm beginning to wonder what odd-ball spec to take for that moment. Doubtless the pet gimmicks I used before will not be working this time.
Ended up switching to this more lenient VQ Splinter/Bear spec tonight. Got me to act4 hell without a hitch. Finally coming into a steady stream of gear upgrades too so, life is good. Inferno will be quite a shock to my paltry ~22k hp and ~7k dps though. It may be coming time to see what all cheap upgrades are available on the AH. I've managed to squirrel away almost a million gold and my scrooging instincts are now strongly opposed to spending.
I am absolutely terrified of hell mode diablo. Nightmare was a test in and of itself. I'm beginning to wonder what odd-ball spec to take for that moment. Doubtless the pet gimmicks I used before will not be working this time.
Hmm that looks familiar If you want to use pets use Gargantuan and the Bruiser Rune. He can somewhat survive boss fights and rune will stun Diablo periodically. With your current build just stay back as far as you can and hit with splinters, once he warps to you hit spiritwalk and blow all your CD's and unleash bears, run away / repeat. The realm of terror your on your own for that, lots of kiting and whatever it takes... I hate 2nd phase.
I entered inferno with 25K HP, 9K dps and 200ish resistances, I got my ass handed to me a lot but I still progressed. Now sitting at 15K unbuffed 28K HP and 500ish resistances, act 1 is easy farm mode now... I really should try act 2 one day
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
Ended up switching to this more lenient VQ Splinter/Bear spec tonight. Got me to act4 hell without a hitch. Finally coming into a steady stream of gear upgrades too so, life is good. Inferno will be quite a shock to my paltry ~22k hp and ~7k dps though. It may be coming time to see what all cheap upgrades are available on the AH. I've managed to squirrel away almost a million gold and my scrooging instincts are now strongly opposed to spending.
I am absolutely terrified of hell mode diablo. Nightmare was a test in and of itself. I'm beginning to wonder what odd-ball spec to take for that moment. Doubtless the pet gimmicks I used before will not be working this time.
Actually, 22k hp isn't that bad. It's the resists you have to worry about. I'm not sure if it is possible to get enough HP without high resist values to actually survive in Inferno.
Also, the bad part about hell mode diablo isn't Diablo. It's the damn Shadow WD's. They'll Zombie Bear your ass before you know what happened. That, or you'll get "lucky" and they'll just fear you (for what feels like the full time) or hex you.
I don't know how many times I've killed Diablo, and the only time I've had trouble was the shadow WD's.
Well not much, Greece is still teetering on the edge of debt oblivion and everyone's still holding their breath, the War on Terror is still so boring that it's not even making the occasional headline. Hollywood continues to produce crappy sequels, reboots and "reimaginings" rather than risk doing anything original. Um, Angelina Jolie stuck her leg out. That's about it?
And in the world of gaming, forums are full of QQers and whining, people are screaming about D3 being too hard/too easy/not like D2/too much like D2 etc. Oh and the popular new thing is to say "always online DRM" and any variation of "RMAH $$$ greedy capitalist swine" and so forth. Meanwhile sane people are too busy playing the game and having a ball (except when jailor moltex vortex vampirics are melting their faces off).
95%? I'd love to see those figures... Game went from having 20k+ in public games to less than 2k in what feels like overnight.
It's almost like the number of people playing a game at launch is a big spike and afterwards it declines sharply. But that can't be right, that wouldn't match the history of every game ever or anything.
Well, I bested diablo after some practice and a lot of gold in repair money. Upon review of my gear I decided some farming was in order before carefully testing inferno mode (tomorrow seems like a good day). I spent an afternoon enjoying my first experience with the NV buff (the joy of seeing rares drop off every boss was indescribable) and made a healthy sum of cash and nabbing a few item level 55-60 upgrades in hell mode.
At this point I was a little curious and decided to give the AH a look. To my suprise I noticed there were quite a few massive upgrades for sale at pennies on the dollar. I bought a dagger and a couple armor pieces to replace my level 30-40 gear that was still making me look bad, total cost was less than 20k gold. I've now resolved some of my issues as my list dmg is up around 10k and my hp is at a more respectable figure. My resistances are nothing special, but I will see how the morrow plays out before I go planning for upgrades.
Feel free to add me if you're on the NA server. I just finished act1 of inferno (having to skip quite a few champions along the way) which was every bit as challenging as I had hoped. I joined a public coop game afterward in the hopes of farming some, but the groups for inferno seem very spotty. Act2 monsters appear quite happy 2-shotting me so I am going to farm act1 a few days before giving it another go.
In other news, spirit vessel saved my ass too many times to count and is the sole reason I defeated the butcher. As he enraged and the room went up in flames, spirit vessel proc'd, allowed me to spirit walk heal, soul harvest heal, and whittle off the last tiny bit of his HP with bears. It was a very exciting kill (leoric was also tough, but in more of a ":yawn: is this over yet?" kind of way) to say the least.
Taking a bit of a break as I put in a lot of time today, but it's possible I will return tonight.
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At the moment pets+poison seems to be the best option if not the only option I have considering my gear deficit. It buffs my dogs/gargantuan up to viable meat shield status between the generous DR on jungle/zombie handler and the further dr for applied poision. Between using stinker garg, poision dogs, acid raid, and darts, there's really no way much of anything on-screen or near a pet is not being debilitated. Also, the pets have done a great job of helping me defeat nm act bosses who keep me running too often to apply much dart dps.
I don't expect the pet fun to last forever, but either way I am likely to need nightmare mode farm to make any kind of headway in hell, to say nothing of inferno. Hopefully the loot gods of sanctuary will smile upon me later
The Mongrels I never cared for much anyway. They reminded me of the dire wolves for the Druid and I hated always having to bring them back to life cause they wouldn't have the sustainability akin to the Necro's golems. Man, golems kicked ass.
Siaynoq's Playthroughs
Didn't have any time to log in today so finishing nm diablo will have to wait. I hope level 50 is ok for starting hell mode.
Good to hear you're recovering...
There was a recent Reddit AMAA where Jay Wilson answered this. For some reason, he felt that having bosses drop guaranteed rares for the first kill past normal would be detrimental to the game. I'm not really sure why. It was something like he was afraid people would think boss runs were supposed to be the way to farm or something. In any case, he said others on the team have convinced him that he was wrong about that and guaranteed rare drops will be added to post-normal boss kills at some point in the future.
Also, welcome back to the forums even though I don't think we've crossed paths before. I might have to go check out that religion thread though. Go-go gadget skepticism!
A fellow skeptic! Huzzah!
Today I gave public cooperative games a shake and despite some bugs (periodically unable to use party chat) and a disconnect or two, it was quite fulfilling. I began a game at the start of act1 and our party nearly made it to the conclusion of act2. There was much donating of favorable drops between myself and a barbarian (we seemed to get each other's loot at every turn) and good spirits were maintained all around until the inevitable need for us to part ways.
During this jaunt I managed to skill my way into zombie bears and after some fiddling with my spell setup I fumbled into what appeared to be an optimal build (for my equipment set at least). My desire to avoid Vision Quest was foiled, but with four short and fairly useful cooldowns to operate from and the ability to retain splinters it handles solo and group questing nicely. I remain to test it on a serious boss encounter, but I have high hopes.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#afUdRZ!VXU!accZaa
It indeed is. The whole loot system kind of failed to deliver and make any significant improvements upon the D2 system, which had some pretty big flaws by itself. But they appear to be in the process of fixing the dreaded state in which the legendary items are in as of now, and the ridiculous idea of bosses not dropping at least a rare on first kills on any difficulty is apparently being thrown out of the game as well. So things might get a lot better real soon.
Also, wizard rocks. I'm currently playing through hardcore Hell with the class and I find it rather enjoying. The mobility wizard has allows for some great display of player skill. I'll be devastated when she dies. xD
If this is what passes for an afterlife, complete with job, bills, and the like, I would like to have a word with the entity in charge. >D
Indeed and i'm a wee bit undergeared to make much use of the bears, but for hell mode it's doing alright. I just wish I could get pierce the veil in there for splinters to hit as hard as they used to on my old build.
That sounds hopeful. If they can manage that in the same patch as fixing WD pets it will do much for my quality of life.
I found the wizard very tedious in the early levels, but I will give it a fair shake some day. I commend you on your brave HC play. I haven't got the courage to step up to that level yet.
Ended up switching to this more lenient VQ Splinter/Bear spec tonight. Got me to act4 hell without a hitch. Finally coming into a steady stream of gear upgrades too so, life is good. Inferno will be quite a shock to my paltry ~22k hp and ~7k dps though. It may be coming time to see what all cheap upgrades are available on the AH. I've managed to squirrel away almost a million gold and my scrooging instincts are now strongly opposed to spending.
I am absolutely terrified of hell mode diablo. Nightmare was a test in and of itself. I'm beginning to wonder what odd-ball spec to take for that moment. Doubtless the pet gimmicks I used before will not be working this time.
Hmm that looks familiar If you want to use pets use Gargantuan and the Bruiser Rune. He can somewhat survive boss fights and rune will stun Diablo periodically. With your current build just stay back as far as you can and hit with splinters, once he warps to you hit spiritwalk and blow all your CD's and unleash bears, run away / repeat. The realm of terror your on your own for that, lots of kiting and whatever it takes... I hate 2nd phase.
I entered inferno with 25K HP, 9K dps and 200ish resistances, I got my ass handed to me a lot but I still progressed. Now sitting at 15K unbuffed 28K HP and 500ish resistances, act 1 is easy farm mode now... I really should try act 2 one day
Actually, 22k hp isn't that bad. It's the resists you have to worry about. I'm not sure if it is possible to get enough HP without high resist values to actually survive in Inferno.
Also, the bad part about hell mode diablo isn't Diablo. It's the damn Shadow WD's. They'll Zombie Bear your ass before you know what happened. That, or you'll get "lucky" and they'll just fear you (for what feels like the full time) or hex you.
I don't know how many times I've killed Diablo, and the only time I've had trouble was the shadow WD's.
Well not much, Greece is still teetering on the edge of debt oblivion and everyone's still holding their breath, the War on Terror is still so boring that it's not even making the occasional headline. Hollywood continues to produce crappy sequels, reboots and "reimaginings" rather than risk doing anything original. Um, Angelina Jolie stuck her leg out. That's about it?
And in the world of gaming, forums are full of QQers and whining, people are screaming about D3 being too hard/too easy/not like D2/too much like D2 etc. Oh and the popular new thing is to say "always online DRM" and any variation of "RMAH $$$ greedy capitalist swine" and so forth. Meanwhile sane people are too busy playing the game and having a ball (except when jailor moltex vortex vampirics are melting their faces off).
It's almost like the number of people playing a game at launch is a big spike and afterwards it declines sharply. But that can't be right, that wouldn't match the history of every game ever or anything.
At this point I was a little curious and decided to give the AH a look. To my suprise I noticed there were quite a few massive upgrades for sale at pennies on the dollar. I bought a dagger and a couple armor pieces to replace my level 30-40 gear that was still making me look bad, total cost was less than 20k gold. I've now resolved some of my issues as my list dmg is up around 10k and my hp is at a more respectable figure. My resistances are nothing special, but I will see how the morrow plays out before I go planning for upgrades.
Thanks for the support everyone, see you in-game!
In other news, spirit vessel saved my ass too many times to count and is the sole reason I defeated the butcher. As he enraged and the room went up in flames, spirit vessel proc'd, allowed me to spirit walk heal, soul harvest heal, and whittle off the last tiny bit of his HP with bears. It was a very exciting kill (leoric was also tough, but in more of a ":yawn: is this over yet?" kind of way) to say the least.
Taking a bit of a break as I put in a lot of time today, but it's possible I will return tonight.